


i better be around you

by zhovel



Series: the basement [3]
Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: F/F, IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE ENDING OF LIFE IS STRANGE DO NOT READ PLEASE, life is strange au, loona literally has a song called butterfly this au was fated ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28583886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhovel/pseuds/zhovel
Summary: by the time they reach the lighthouse, it is too late to do anything but wait.(or: the ending of life is strange but make it lipseul.)
Relationships: Jo Haseul/Kim Jungeun | Kim Lip
Series: the basement [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1836037
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	i better be around you

By the time they reach the lighthouse, it is too late to do anything but wait. Lip slides her phone out of her pocket. 9%. No signal bars. 

“You think that they listened to us?” Lip says, toeing her shoe against the side of the cliff. She finds a stray pebble, and it tumbles off the edge when she kicks it a little too hard. “About— when we warned them.”

“Yerim probably would,” Haseul mutters. “Chaewon. Hyejoo too. Jiwoo would follow them anywhere, but I don’t know about Jinsol and Sooyoung. Or the others.”

“Maybe Hyunjin,” Lip injects fake positivity into her voice. “She’s smarter than we give her credit for.” 

Haseul glares down at her hands. 

“Don’t blame yourself,” Lip says, because this was Haseul, and Haseul always takes everyone else’s problems as hers to solve. This was how they got here in the first place after all. Sometimes Lip closes her eyes, and she doesn’t hear the screech of a train coming towards her; but she can hear Haseul’s scream echoing off the tracks and feel the memories slipping away as time reverses. When she is asleep, she dreams of beached whales and polaroids. 

Haseul turns, and her eyes are full of anguish and pain and relief. “How am I supposed to not do that? This happened because of me.”

“Because of _me_ ,” Lip says. Haseul shakes her head in reply, clutching her hands tight against her chest like it was some dangerous, wounded animal that she needed to protect others from. 

The two of them stand like this: Haseul at the end of the path, Lip one step behind her, like they always have since they were in middle school. When Lip decided to fall in love with the upperclassman from dance class instead of Haseul, when she realised that her body ached to lean down to kiss someone instead of up. 

It has always been Haseul.

“I would do it all again if I had to,” Haseul says, curling her palm around her camera, knuckles clenched white with the amount of force in her grip. Lip slides her hand around Haseul’s waist and tugs her closer. In the distance, the storm starts to build. 

“There is one way, you know,” Lip says softly. The wind howls. Haseul whips her head towards her at her words, eyes full of horror. 

“No!”

“But you _could_ ,” Lip says, pleading. She doesn’t want Haseul to carry the guilt with her. This is the type of person Haseul is, she would destroy herself for the people she loved if she had the chance. Haseul had to watch herself lose Lip, over and over. Lip doesn’t know if she can survive the same thing. “I got a second chance with you. To make it up to you. I’m not worth it. It’s your family. _My_ family. Our friends. Some of them won’t survive the storm.”

“But you,” Haseul says fiercely. She curls towards Lip, resting her chin on her shoulder and planting a kiss there; as light as butterfly wings. “I wouldn’t give you up for any of them. I can’t.”

“I know,” Lip says softly, closing her eyes. 

The rain falls pitter-patter. Haseul is warm in her arms, and Lip thinks that she would sacrifice the world to have this moment last forever, if she could. 

(Or maybe they already did that. Maybe Haseul should have learnt to let her go the first time she watched Lip die in front of her, maybe she should have let Lip bleed out instead of using her powers for someone like _Lip_.

She doesn’t deserve it. All Lip does is occasionally graffiti the alleys in their town and work at her parents’ diner, hell, it wouldn’t make a difference if she was alive or not.)

When the silence finally gets overbearing, Lip opens her eyes. “Hey.” Haseul manages to smile back at her, but it wavers. “What if I told you I could fix this?”

“Fix it?” Haseul says. The rain plasters her hair to her face. Lip stares at the strand of hair on Haseul’s forehead, and finally gives in to the urge to tuck it back into place, fingers brushing against Haseul’s ear. “You can’t. Even _I_ can’t fix it.” 

Lip raises her eyebrow at Haseul, a silent _try me_. She rummages in her coat pocket—for the briefest of moments, when she thinks that her pocket is empty, she feels an overwhelming urge to laugh. It's too late for panic. It would have been funny to have lost it somewhere along the way up, the universe making the choice for them. But then her fingers brush against the edge of a polaroid, and she has no choice but to pull it out.

A picture of the blue butterfly. 

“No,” Haseul whispers, almost in horror. “You kept it.”

“Just in case,” Lip replies, watching her. She’s always watching Haseul. Even now, moments before her possible death, she still can’t tear her eyes away. Her world is right there in front of her; it doesn’t matter if she loses everything else after this. All it matters is that Haseul knows that Lip loves her, and that Lip got a chance to hold Haseul dear to her, just once. 

Just one more time. 

Haseul’s hand trembles when she reaches out and takes the polaroid from Lip. There’s almost wonder on her face as she looks down at it, breathing out. “It seems so long ago.”

“Not for me,” Lip says, shrugging. “I mean—you’re the time traveller, not me. I just happened to die a lot.”

“Don’t joke about it,” Haseul says sharply. Lip raises her hands in mock surrender, not wanting to spend her last moments fighting with Haseul. 

She knows the right thing to do, of course. It was one of those stupid moral dilemmas again—one life, or dozens? One love, or an entire town?

No sane person would choose Lip. 

“You can do it, you know,” she says softly. “It’s alright. I wouldn’t mind, it was meant to happen anyway.”

Haseul presses her lips tight together, face steely. Lip tries to commit the sharp angle of her nose to memory. She wonders what would happen when Haseul turns back time again, and Lip dies for real this time— would she wake up in another universe? One where Haseul doesn’t come back to Eden? 

If there’s one thing Lip has learnt, it is that fate is a fickle, untrustworthy bitch. 

“I love you, you know?” Haseul says. She finally turns towards Lip, and there’s something desperate in the way she’s staring at her, like she’s trying to burn the image of Lip in front of her into her brain. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Lip says, and means it with her entire being. It would be okay, she knows, as long as Haseul is alright. “Come here.” She wraps her arms tighter around Haseul, kissing the top of her head. 

Any moment now. 

Maybe Lip would end up in an afterlife, or maybe she just wouldn’t exist after this. She was never meant to make it this far—Haseul had turned back time over and over to save Lip from dying, and now there’s a hurricane making its way towards them because she had altered fate too many times. 

And finally, Haseul pulls away, tilting her head up. Lip wants to kiss her. She doesn’t. 

“Alright,” Haseul says. “I’ll do it.” 

Lip just smiles at her. It will be over, at least. 

Haseul lay the polaroid flat on her palm, staring down at it, determined. It almost feels like hatred, the way she doesn’t move a single muscle. Lip holds her breath, bracing herself for the feeling of life being ripped away from her. 

Then all of a sudden, Haseul tears the photo apart— into twos, then fours; then the wind picks up the remaining pieces and carries them off.

“What,” Lip says flatly.

“I can’t!” Haseul cries out. The second the words erupt out of her, Haseul's body seems to fold into itself. She collapses onto the ground, chest heaving with sobs. “I can’t do it. I don't care if it makes me the worst, most horrible, selfish person in the world, but I can’t give you up.”

“Haseul,” says Lip.

“I can’t lose you,” Haseul gasps, hugging her knees to her chest, curling into herself. “Not again. I can’t watch you die. I’m sorry.”

She looks so small like this, like she’s carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Lip’s heart hurts for Haseul.

“No, hey,” she says, crouching down, “Haseul, it’s alright. Haseul. I’m here, see? I’m with you.” 

“You’re with me,” Haseul repeats tearfully.

“Yeah,” Lip says. The two of them are completely drenched by now, the rain pouring down; but they can’t go back to town. The hurricane is almost here by now. “You saved me. You’re a hero.”

“I’m a coward,” Haseul whispers. “I can’t lose you.” 

Lip cups Haseul’s face with both of her hands, lifting her chin up. Haseul’s cheeks are wet—with rain, or with tears, Lip can’t tell. But she rubs her thumb against Haseul’s jaw, trying her best to distract Haseul from the storm. “Thank you,” Lip says, and wishes that she can kiss Haseul. 

  
  
  


(When the hurricane tears through the town, Lip hugs Haseul tight against her and doesn’t let go. She is the only one who watches the storm happen. And when it is finally over, they get onto Lip’s motorcycle and drive away.

Neither of them look back.)

**Author's Note:**

> yeah it's 3am and i literally have an essay due tomorrow and half of it is unwritten aha. yes i wrote an entire au to avoid the essay. yes it is like half my grade. unbetaed and unedited, maybe i'll come back someday to fix all the mistakes.
> 
> title from butterfly by loona. did you really expect anything else? this is a loona au of life is strange.
> 
> twitter: [yvezoul](https://twitter.com/yvezoul)  
> curiouscat: [yvezoul](https://curiouscat.me/yvezoul)  
> 


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